A Review of Visualization Methods of Cyberspace Map

With the development of information technology, cyberspace is closely related to national security, military, politics, economy and life. As a tool for human beings to understand complex cyberspace, cyberspace map has attracted more and more attention, but the existing research is fragmented and scattered. In order to form the method system and product system of cyberspace map visualization, expand the functions and application fields of cartography, and provide map guarantee for safeguarding the sovereignty, security and governance of cyberspace and promoting cyberspace research, this paper systematically summarizes the research status of cyberspace map visualization based on the characteristics of cyberspace and the requirements of the cyberspace map visualization task, the research direction of cyberspace map are analyzed. Firstly, the characteristics of cyberspace are expounded from the perspective of cartography. Then it introduces metaphor theory to analyze and understand the composition of cyberspace, which is divided into four layers and seven elements, namely, basic layer (including geographical elements, physical elements and logical elements), role layer (including entity and virtual role elements), data layer (including data elements) and activity layer (including activity elements). The visualization tasks of cyberspace map are divided into two categories: Conventional tasks, attack and defense tasks. The specific contents of each type of task and the elements to be visualized are described. After that, the existing visualization products of cyberspace map are widely collected, and the visualization methods of elements are sorted out. The visualization methods of cyberspace map are summarized into three categories: Map, topology map and knowledge map. Finally, the research progress is summarized and analyzed. It is considered that the basic theory of cyberspace map visualization, the mapping between cyberspace and geographical space, and the visualization of virtual form elements are the future research direction.